The leaders of Muslim community and religious organizations signed a joint document on December 11, 2017 - The Social Concept of Muslims in Ukraine. At a solemn meeting, representatives of Islamic organizations spoke about the history of this document.

The ruins of the old church in the district center of Rozhische in Volyn have become the subject of controversy between the Protestants and the Orthodox. The temple was built in the nineteenth century by the Baptists, “the Soviets” expropriated and placed manufacturing plants in the church.

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Expert thought

… the Moscow Patriarchate is busy both in Ukraine and the outside world agitating against such a grant of autocephaly to the UOC-KP and the UAOC, which it regards as schismatic. But its ability to influence world Orthodoxy is limited…

Religious Studies

The history evidences: the Local Churches that were historically associated with earthly empires were uninterested in the canonical establishment of local churches under their jurisdictions, and therefore usually granted autocephaly to churches only under the pressure of historic circumstances. No exception is the Moscow Patriarchate, which has incorporated the Orthodox Church in Ukraine since 1686.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy and Ukrainian society suffer from division. The majority of Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The rest of the Orthodox community of Ukraine has chosen a different path of self-proclaimed autocephaly. However, neither the first nor the second path is optimal for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to date.

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Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeev: All the Holy Synod members have supported the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church

In April 2018, the Ukrainian Supreme Rada supported the initiative of the President of Ukraine P. A. Poroshenko to appeal to the Patriarch of Constantinople to establish an autocephalous Church in Ukraine. On May 14, after the Holy Synod session, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, according to mospat.ru stated:

This problem was not on the Synod’s agenda. However, since His Holiness the Patriarch has received numerous letters from the Ukrainian faithful, it was discussed. The Holy Synod members underscored that it lies beyond the church canonical sphere. The appeal to grant autocephaly was made by the secular authorities of Ukraine with the support of schismatic uncanonical communities. The ecclesial status of these communities, which have separated themselves from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is not recognized in the world Orthodoxy, that is, it has a zero status. The supreme authority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine has not addressed itself to the Patriarchate of Constantinople on this matter.

It is impossible to assume that a canonical church authority should made a decision on the basis of an initiative made by uncanonical communities or a secular authority whose interference in the internal affairs of a Church in inadmissible.

The granting of the status of a ‘parallel’ autocephalous Church to a schism despite the will of a canonical Church in whose canonical territory it is located is an ecclesiastical legal nonsense.

All the members of the Holy Synod have expressed support for the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.